Tuesday, November 27, 2012

baby girl

Artemis and Nao were my very first features here. Well, the couple with the best name paring ever had a wee one, and her name is just as beautiful as mom's and dad's. I hadn't caught up with their blog for a while, and didn't know Artemis was expecting. What a nice surprise it was to find this beautiful baby girl and Artemis' generous sharing of her journey into motherhood.

It's always so beautiful to watch people shift into parenthood.

I think most of the things we make and do after children come to us are full of their presence in our lives, whether it's detectable to the outside world or not.
Often for families of artists, the crafts become rich with the influence of parenthood (even if they're lacking for it, too) while the children become rich with the art processes. It's a hard balance to strike sometimes. I notice that for a lot of people, the answer seems to be a simple surrendering and shift of perception, a redefining of what constitutes a creative (or parenting) act, such that it becomes something much more inclusive. Seamless and graceful at times and super challenging at others, this rather messy reconfiguration is pretty rich, I think - I sure do enjoy these stories, any way.

Congratulations, Gaby! It is a lot of surrender and redefining, but you also get introduced to so many new things through your kids... or back into old things. Doing paintings with my girls got me back into painting my own stuff for the first time in ten years... full circle!